


Thistle and Silk (the secret is love)

by ApprenticedMagician



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Animal Transformation, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, some body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 13:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18235673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/pseuds/ApprenticedMagician
Summary: A curse, a prince, and true love's clothes. What else can Jean do but become a witch, fall in love, and learn to spin?A retelling of the Six Swans.





	1. The Curse

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to [viridianjane](http://viridianjane.tumblr.com/) for not only hosting the Reverse Bang but also creating such [beautiful and inspiring art](http://viridianjane.tumblr.com/post/183700218324/art-for-apprenticedmagicians-thistle-and-silk) as my selected artist - without you, I wouldn't have completed one of my favourite works to date!
> 
> If the 'body horror' tag concerns you, I describe an early animal transformation in some detail. Three sentences near the end of this first chapter are as gorey as I could stand (which is not very much). If you need anything more, feel free to message me at [my tumblr](http://apprenticedmagician.tumblr.com), under the same username.

Once upon a time, there was a second son born to the second prince of the royal family that ruled Ravin, a kingdom as dark and gloomy as the magic that populated the hearts of all its citizens. The son was named Riko, which means ‘expectation’ in Ravinese, and from the time of his birth he was astonishingly clever in the ways of magic.

One day, Riko decided to be spectacularly impressive. His greatest idol was an ancient ancestor, a witch of infamy who had once transformed the heirs of six rival families into ravens, and forced them into her servitude. If Riko could provide his king (and uncle) with six raven servants – the very sigil of their shared royal household – then he would be forced to acknowledge Riko’s worth and reward him with kingly favours.

Now while any families that rivaled their own had already long been decimated and made barren, the palace housed an orphanage in one of its lesser wings. Riko had seen the children running wildly around the palace grounds, trampling his mother’s gardens with six pairs of mucky feet. Surely, they wouldn’t be missed as children – much better that they be valued as avian help.

For seven days and seven nights, the little witch worked on his spell, weaving his enchantments and focusing his Intent upon six ordinary shirts. Finally, when his spelled shirts were ready and the children were asleep, Riko snuck into the orphanage and threw the shirts atop six sleeping mounds.

Immediately, there was a brilliant burst of white light, bright enough to blind anyone who had been watching, and then those six child-shaped mounds morphed into six sleeping swans with feathers whiter than the purest snow. But rather than feel pride over the workings of his magic, Riko’s heart plummeted and his stomach turned sour – for who would accept anything so white in a kingdom best known for its darkness?

He fled the orphanage in an embarrassed rage and intended to return with a method of erasing all evidence of his failure, even if he had to stain every bit of white with red.

What Riko hadn’t known, was that during the days he had been crafting his spell, a seventh child had been adopted to the orphanage and welcomed into the children’s family structure. Her name was Katelyn and she was the littlest one of them all, with feet as soft as flower petals. The third orphan, who had the kindest heart among them, had given Katelyn his bed to sleep in until a new one could be moved into their shared chambers. He had slept on the floor past the farthest bed and had woken as soon as Riko had entered the room. Frightened by all he had seen, the third orphan hastily woke the others, who panicked upon realizing what had been done to them. In a jumbled haste, the third orphan, who was named Jean, lead his brothers and sisters into the forest that surrounded the castle and they left Ravin, never to be heard from again.

 

* * *

 

Deep in the forest, the third day after they had run, Jean and his swans came across an abandoned hut made up of stone and a thatched roof, with a plentiful garden and a clean well but no one lived inside. There were seven beds but only one small wardrobe which held enough to clothe only a single person. A shelf near the hearth was lined with books on transformation spells and curse breaking; beneath, lay a loom and spinning wheel. The books were written in the Franconian letters Jean knew from his first home, rather than the overly cursive of Ravinese which he had never been taught.

It was then Jean realized they had fled far beyond Ravin’s borders and stumbled into the Enchanted Forest, a place so distant from Ravin it was only heard of in stories. But it was difficult to run a second time, when the food was so fresh and the hut was so warm. So, the family slated their hunger and thirst and slept an entire sun cycle and when they awoke to find nothing changed, their fear began to ease. Cursed as they were, the swans did not fear further magic, and Jean was reluctant to leave them, especially when this hut might offer a way to reverse what had befallen them.

A quick peruse of the books revealed very little about the nature of the spell Riko had used to change Jean’s siblings so extremely. A closer read yielded clearer ideas, but no solutions. A comparative analysis over a month eventually granted a promising solution – to undo the curse, the afflicted persons must be covered in clothing made from True Love.

Another month’s research let him conclude that the love required could be proven and demonstrated by fulfilling three conditions: first, the cloth must be woven from nettles, which would sting and prick no matter how gently handled; second, the cloth must be sewn with thread made from aster petals, which would tear at the slightest misstep; third, no words or sounds, no matter how joyous or sad, no matter how mindless or unwilling, could pass his lips until his work was complete and the curse undone.

Jean’s kind heart would let him do nothing but commit to the task.

“Let these last words be a comfort to you all,” he said to his brothers and sisters. “I swear on my life that I will set you free.”

And so, the hut became Home.

 

* * *

 

A year after Jean’s work began, the curse changed. None of them knew if Riko, still far away in Ravin, had cleverly stitched layers into the spell, or if instead it was some natural mutation defending the curse’s weakening state. No matter the cause, one morning, Jean awoke to see his brothers and sisters asleep in their beds, returned to their human bodies.

Overwhelmed, Jean cried out, “Sara!!” in shock, and shook awake his closest sister, who swatted him away for another few minutes rest. Instantly, her eyes shot open, belatedly remembering she shouldn’t have been able to swat and then she began shouting, helping her brother wake the others.

Once they were all awake, there was a flurry of tears and questions, everyone’s hands touching someone else as the children had been unable to do for over a year.

For all they knew, the curse had simply worn off, or lost its power. Neil suggested that perhaps Riko hadn’t been as strong as his lineage famously was. Jean hadn’t cared either way, wrapping up his little brother in a tight embrace, crying and babbling all the while about how alone he had felt and how frightened he had been to never see them again. They returned their own embraces and fears just as fiercely.

But then the hour shifted, and Jean’s six brothers and sisters began horrifically to regress with eyes wide, scared and popping; their skulls cracked and shrank while their necks elongated with overstretched sinew; their arms bent back unnaturally as pure white feathers ripped apart their skin; and all the while they kicked and screamed and wailed, all of them unwilling to leave him for a second time.

But they all did, as soon as the sun crested the horizon and the day’s eighth hour began.

Jean wept, collapsing to the floor. His family had never been freed. The curse had either taunted him or merely tempted him away from their saving grace and now he had to start from the beginning, for the year’s gathered nettles and asters had crumbled to windswept dust at his first sound. His love hadn’t been strong enough.

He spent the rest of the day spitting out all the words he could think of: old prayers from his parents’ bedside, vengeful curses against the young Raven Witch, soothing comforts to the rattled feathers of his still imprisoned brothers and sisters, silly songs they used to fall asleep to – anything at all he wanted to say before he renewed his vow and once again became silent as the dead.

The next day, he restarted his work.

Seven days after that, from the seventh hour to the eighth, Jean’s brothers and sisters returned to him again, as whole and human as they ever were. But this time they didn’t exchange words or hugs or tears. Instead, for the hour they had, they helped him complete chores, and gathered food or nettles and asters, any small labour to ease what little they could of Jean’s tremendous burden.

And so it went on, for another five silent and lonely years.


	2. The Prince

On the dawn of the fifth year they lived in the Forest (the eighteenth year of Jean’s life), a newcomer stumbled into Jean’s path – an occurrence which had never happened before.

He had been on his knees, gathering his newest batch of nettles to spin into cloth when a twig snapped behind him and Jean whirled around to catch sight of a startled man. He was young, about as old as Jean or perhaps older like Thea, but he was shorter than Jean and dressed in fine clothing, wrapped in furs as though it were winter in the world outside the Forest. He was also armed with a quiver and dagger. Jean tensed to run.

“I’m sorry!” the youth cried, hands out in placation. His ungloved fingers were adorned with rings as golden as the chain around his neck. Perhaps it was only the autumn season, and not the winter. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. My party was attacked by bandits and in running, I’ve found myself lost in these woods.”

Still wary of the weapons, Jean slowly let his anxiety melt away. The Forest had never let him or the swans come to harm, it was unlikely that this directionally-challenged fool was powerful enough to divert its protection.

At peace, Jean rose and turned to walk away with his basket, but the man stopped him again. “Wait! Please, if you could only tell me which way I might find the southern river -”

Jean knew of only one river nearby but he was confident that if he pointed, the man would only wind up more lost than before since the Forest’s river ran west, not south. Pulled again by his kind heart, Jean let a sigh out through his nose and gestured for the man to follow him.

 

* * *

 

Of course the first person in five years to accidentally stumble into Jean’s life would be the chattiest person in all four kingdoms. He nattered on more than a fevered nightingale and could probably out-question a Volvan philosopher. Jean filtered out the entire conversation, letting it pass over him like the white noise of the Forest and only tuned in when the man suddenly grasped his shoulder.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

Jean shrugged off his hand and shook his head.

“Is it because you’re mute?”

Jean shot him a mean look, thinking it was rude to ask straight out.

“Apologies, it’s just – well, my entire life everyone has hinged on my every word. I can hardly imagine having no words to offer.”

Jean had plenty of words to offer. But then, this man, adorned in his fine trappings and livery, would know nothing of the sacrifice Jean was shouldering.

“Does my rambling bother you?” he asked, tactfully changing subjects, twisting his rings as though he knew Jean thought little of them. “I can freely admit that I am normally much more restrained. It’s just not every day that a mute stranger leads me to who-knows-where in an unfamiliar wood. You’re not a witch, are you?”

Jean tilted his head to think about it. Technically, he supposed, he was engaging in witchcraft and he did live in the Enchanted Forest, a place that bled magic so thick that some days he could feel it coating his innards with every breath. Did that make him a witch?

“You don’t _seem_ very witchlike,” the man offered. “More like a… a spectre than anything else. Not that I mean anything pejorative, you understand!” His steps began to falter as Jean watched him, perplexed. “I mean to say, ‘otherworldly’ – I –” then he began to blush and said the most embarrassing thing possible: “You’re very beautiful. Pale! And your hair is so dark, I can only imagine you hail from one of the exotic kingdoms.”

Jean put a hand to his hair, self-conscious because he had given no thought to his appearance in so long. His hair had grown extremely long, past the small of his back, and it was probably unkempt. Despite the hours he spent outdoors, his skin remained as pale as it always had been, though his palms had become callused and scarred from years of nettle-handling.

It occurred to Jean then that the stranger must think him a woman. Nannies in the castle had always been cooing over what they called his ‘delicate features’. He briefly considered spontaneously removing his shirt to absolve the man of his mistake but decided it didn’t matter. After a night in the hut, the man would be sent on his way and Jean wouldn’t ever have to see him again.

 

* * *

 

When they came upon the hut, Jean’s brothers and sisters were roosting on the roof and flew down to greet Jean upon seeing him. The stranger ducked and swore, leaping a few feet away before he realized Jean was being fond and gentle with them, stroking their necks and bestowing silent kisses.

“…You _are_ a witch,” the man said, in awe or in shock, and one of the swans – Neil, with icy eyes – hissed and spread his wings, kicking the ground as if he might charge. Jean quickly stroked his neck in an order to stand down. Neil toned it down and Jean rolled his eyes, knowing he had to take what wins he could with his rascal of a younger brother.

Hungry for supper, Jean pointed out the sun to the stranger, setting in the west on the hut’s right side, and then made his way into his home, leaving the door open for the swans and man to follow. Once inside the man couldn’t still his eyes, busy as they were darting around the mounds of nettles and asters, the seven beds, the books in Franconian letters.

“Do you live alone?” he asked, absentmindedly filling the gap in the air with pointless, one-sided conversation. “You mustn’t. You have seven beds. And what language are these written in?” His questions were never answered, but neither did they stop being asked.

Their supper and night passed without incident and when the swans left to their beds to sleep, Jean pushed the man to his own bed and made a patch on the floor, just as his heart had bid him do for Katelyn all those years ago.

In the morning, when Jean pointed to the rising east sun, which came up behind the hut when it should be in an entirely different place, the man spent a starstruck moment sputtering about enchantments and tricksters.

Jean smacked his head to snap him out of it. The man looked shocked, as though no one had risen a hand to him before (unlikely, Jean thought, due to the man’s idiocy). Once recovered, he rubbed the sore spot and said, “By the gods, I’ve ended up in the Enchanted Forest, haven’t I? No where else changes its paths every night.”

Jean nodded, relieved that the man finally had the proper bearings.

“I suppose I ought to head east from here. Troja borders the Forest from the mountains there.”

_Troja, the kingdom of the sun._ Jean should have suspected the man was Trojan given his bright hair and golden skin.

“It seems odd to ask you for your name, after all this time, and odder still when I know you will not answer me. Here,” he loosened a signet ring and offered it up to Jean, “In case you are ever in need of a favour in return, I will know who asks that kindness be repaid. Any man, woman, or child in Troja will know to direct you to me.”

The crest was of the sun, blazing behind a proud, rearing horse. By the time Jean recognized the symbol of Troja’s royal family, the man – the _king_ or the _prince_ – had already vanished beyond the treeline.

 

* * *

 

Jean wasn’t the only one to have recognized their royal trespasser.

The next morning, on their human day, the second orphan Kevin woke him up with a vigorous shake.

“Jean!” he demanded, voice unusually high and full of frantic energy. “Jean! Wake up!”

Jean stubbornly drew the blanket over his head, attempting to wait out the hour and block out Kevin’s dramatics.

Kevin kicked the bedframe. “Jean, you great _moron,_ do you know who that man _was?!_ ”

A single finger released to the world demonstrated that he didn’t know and didn’t much care. He heard Sara break into laughter.

“Let him sleep, Kev,” Thea said, the only one able to chastise Kevin through virtue of being the oldest. “Or else he’ll break his silence just to tell you to piss off.”

“But he met the _Crown Prince of Troja!_  Prince Jeremy!” A heavy hand brought a pillow down on Jean’s defenseless form and a growl almost escaped him, which made him tug down enough blanket to glare. “Do you have any idea how many rules of decorum and etiquette you breached? You smacked _royalty_ upside the head!”

Sara jumped in, saying, “So have all of us, if your lineage is to be believed.”

“Your ever-mighty highness!” called Laila, falling into the exaggerated bow they all used to do when a younger Kevin had insisted he was descended from the noblest family in the Fawks kingdom.

“He deserved it anyway,” Neil chirped, nearly too opinionated for someone so young. “Did you see all the jewelry on him? I worry for Troja – he’s a softer touch than our feathers, I’ll bet.”

Kevin looked aghast at the disrespect.

“His hair did look very soft!” Katelyn said, not quite twelve winters old and clearly excited to have something new to talk about. “Did you see how yellow and fluffy it was? He’s a very handsome prince.”

Jean pulled the blanket back up and relaxed beneath it with a heavy heart, listening to the ruckus that was once the beloved soundtrack to his daily life.

 

* * *

 

Nearly two weeks later, Jean was surprised by strangers for a second time. A party of three men came upon him in a clearing, one of them being the Trojan Prince. The other two were younger than him but just as golden and clad in leather armour, clearly guards who must be more dangerous than their youth suggested if they were escorting the Prince outside their home territory. They looked so identical Jean thought it must be the trick of a looking glass, until one man circled him with a narrow glare while the other leaned against a tree and sniffed his nose, clearly bored.

“Ah-hah!” the Prince crowed, thumping the bored man’s shoulder. “You see, Andrew? I did know where I was going!”

‘Andrew’ rolled his eyes. “Not for three days you didn’t.” Ignoring the prince’s retort, he called out to his doppelganger, “Any impurities, Aaron?”

Jean grew wary, old Ravin stories floating to mind about how the Trojans were talented in sensing magical Intent and disapproved if they found a character they deemed ‘unfit’ - it was rumoured no Ravinese magician had ever earned the approval of a Trojan Senser, but how could they when the Eastern peoples were so concerned with moral philosophy ahead of magic’s awesome potential?

‘Aaron’, who must Sense through sight, seemed almost disappointed to admit, “Not that I can see. Doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous. You?”

Andrew’s eyes sparked in amusement, sniffing his nose once more. “Just whiffs. Nothing substantial.”

“Which I also told you,” the Prince insisted, harking back to some earlier point. “She needs our help, not our suspicion.”

“As if you could know,” Aaron argued. “She’s a mute. You’ve never heard her voice.”

Ignoring him, the Prince turned to a still-shocked Jean, who had never thought he’d see the Prince again, let alone discover he had spent days searching the Forest for him. “I hope it isn’t an intrusion, my lady –” Jean revisited that spontaneous shirt removal idea and felt surprisingly torn “– but I’ve been trained all my life to recognize damsels in distress. Not that you’re distressed!” He backtracked, perhaps because Jean had begun glaring curses at him. “I only mean – oh.”

If Jean had known stripping half-naked would render the Prince speechless, he might have done it the last time, when his rambling made Jean bite scars into his tongue to keep from saying anything.

Andrew laughed vigorously, and continued even when Aaron punched his arm. “Not a damsel either, your highness,” he said, chuckling into a strong fist, which was a little humiliating but at least the words Jean had wanted to say were out in the open.

Recovering swiftly, the Prince cleared his throat and said, “Yes, well, damsel or not, I know you need help. And on my honour as a prince, I intend to offer it.”

Jean smacked a hand to his head, for he was sensitive enough to the Forest’s magic to feel the wisps of binding power the Prince had invoked with his oath. Did the kingdom of Troja teach their sons nothing about oath magic?

Still, Jean did nothing to stop him or the other two from joining him in the aster field, each making the best use they could of pockets and satchels.

“I hope you’ll forgive this further imposition,” the Prince said, crouching close, “but I took the liberty of naming you. The books in your home are written in Franconian, so it was going to be Lucille, when I still thought - well…” he blushed again, embarrassed, and Jean smiled to see how it coloured his face. “Ahem. I suppose it will be Luc now.”

It was a dull and common name in Franconia, but it was more than Jean had been called in years. From the lips of sunshine royalty, he didn’t mind the sound of ‘Luc’ at all.

 

* * *

 

On their way back to the hut, the Prince spewed the same stream of chatter as he had before, both with Jean and his own companions. This time Jean paid it a small amount of attention, though most of it involved people he didn’t know and places he could only imagine.

When they broke though the trees in sight of the hut, and the swans swooped down to greet him, one of the guards jumped in front and drew a knife. “Your highness -!”

But a strangled squawk from behind them made Jean look back and nearly cry out to see Neil’s neck in the grip of the other guard, the strong-fisted one who had laughed in the clearing.

“Well, well,” Andrew drawled, unbothered by Neil’s battering wings or righteous honks, “ _now_ I smell something interesting.”

Neil hissed and snapped, but nothing loosened Andrew’s hold. Not even the knife Jean held to Andrew’s neck, swiftly stolen from the man’s own belt.

“Friend of yours?” Andrew asked.

Jean almost spat out that Neil was his brother but bit himself back just barely in time. Andrew’s eye tracked the trail of blood that slipped from his lip, clever mind putting together what pieces it could.

“Stand down, Andrew,” the Prince commanded, sensing no natural end to the standoff. “Let the animal go. He’s fond of them.”

With a grin, and a taunting (near-affectionate) tap to the throat, Neil was released. Jean’s stolen knife remained.

“Luc,” the Prince gentled, “the offense lies with me. Andrew acts only to protect me, as he is instructed. Please put the knife down.”

Only when Neil hissed his own distaste from Jean’s feet, did Jean move away. Andrew looked amused, as though the knife had never been a threat to him. Jean reassessed the man and noticed for the first time that several clean scars already decorated his neck. Prince Jeremy’s plea to stand down had been for Jean’s safety, not his guard’s.

“It’s best that we leave, I think,” the Prince said, hands kept open where a still-hissing Neil could see them. “Too much upheaval for one day and my kingdom will have missed me. But we’ll be back, Luc. You have my word on that.”

The Forest’s magic tightened, not unlike a noose or a lifeline.

 

* * *

 

Despite their unwelcome, Prince Jeremy and his twin guards continued to visit him, first every three days, then every two, and then finally every single day, until Jean wasn’t sure what state of affairs Troja must be in to allow its Prince to disappear every day. Neil himself made it quite clear that he disapproved of their intrusion, and not only during the weekly hour he was granted human speech. Even as a swan, whenever he sensed the party arriving, it was all hisses and glares and sometimes even charges, though Andrew apprehended him every time. It seemed to amuse the man.

The other swans were of more mixed opinions, for the men brought gifts and supplies of all exotic varieties. Thea worried the Forest’s protection was wearing thin since the men never got confused by the shifting paths; Kevin remained distressed with every rudimentary task the Prince performed to service Jean; Sara delighted in the same; Laila was grateful for the help and a little in awe of the gesture; Katelyn felt similarly, though directed her admiration towards the guards.

“They haven’t sworn the way the Prince has,” she gushed, watching from the window in case the men came early enough to catch the swans as they never had before. “And they help anyway, without complaint, without even knowing why they’re doing it.”

“They’re doing it because their Prince has ordered them to,” Thea said, brushing aside the pure intentions Katelyn had assigned them.

Katelyn wasn’t deterred. “No. You haven’t spent time with them, Thea.” She smiled, like she knew a secret. “One of them, Aaron, don’t you think he has the most incredible eyes?”

Neil scoffed. “Better than his brother’s.”

“You sound positively lovestruck, little ones,” Sara teased to which Neil vehemently sputtered denials.

Katelyn just turned rosy. “I meant his ability of Sight. He talks to me like he knows I’m a person, gives me gifts like little flowers or trinkets from his marketplace. I’m sure Andrew’s Scent tells him the same.”

The rest of them fell silent at that, and Jean wondered if they were all questioning whether the guard’s knowing was a threat or a boon.  

Especially when Prince Jeremy asked Jean to move into the royal palace the next day. And the day after that when Jean refused the first. And the day after that. In no time at all it became a ritual between them, more like a daily private joke instead of a real plea.

(Though sometimes Jean caught the Prince... _looking_ at him and he had to wonder…)

 

* * *

 

Jean couldn’t remember how it happened, but one moment he was walking a yet-unexplored forest floor and the next he was slipping and tumbling down a steep ditch. Barely holding in his yelp of surprise, Jean could do nothing but wait a long seven seconds before the world stopped spinning. He gave it another count of ten to settle and tried to focus on the shape of the clouds he saw through the thicket. Then he pried his teeth out of his lower lip and assessed the state of his basket. It lay out of arm’s reach to his right, a rough dent bending the middle of it, where his arm must have crushed it in the fall. It was nearly empty, a few sad nettle fronds and aster petals tucked in the bottom. The rest – which had filled the basket to half capacity – were gone.

Letting out a sigh, Jean moved to roll himself upright and had to immediately bite his lip again when his ankle cried out in agony. Breathing hard enough to hold back tears, Jean cautiously looked towards his foot. It was horribly bent out of shape, limply pointing the entirely wrong direction.

Jean fought not to panic.

Carefully, he tried pushing himself up on his elbows – maybe he could crawl his way back up the ravine. The violent shock of pain and lightheadedness convinced him otherwise.

Jean fought even harder not to panic.

It was the middle of the day and he was always gathering around this time. He wouldn’t be missed for hours. By the time anyone would think to find him, it would be too dark to search. But even if they did, he had taken a new route today for gathering, because his usual fields were growing thin. No one would search the right places and even if they happened upon his path by chance, they might not check over the edge of the ravine and he couldn’t call out to anyone who might be looking.

Jean fought viciously not to panic, leaving no effort to hold back his tears.

 

* * *

 

He was right, of course. It was well into dusk before he heard the first swan honk, a brother or sister worried and looking him. He heard them but never saw them fly overhead, and so Jean despaired.

More hours passed. He heard the swans twice more but if they flew overhead, it was dark enough that he couldn’t see them. He had tried moving thrice more, and each time was a little more bearable than the last, until he was a full body-length up the side of the ravine. A little higher up, and he would reach a small outcrop of rocks, which he could at least bang together to make some noise.

The night was growing cold. Something swift moved through the bushes. Whether prey or predator, it ignored him, granting only a glimpse of fur.

 

* * *

 

He had reached the rocks and almost succumbed to exhaustion when light began dimly to spill into the ravine’s far side.

“Luc?!” cried a panicked Prince. “Luc, are you here?!”

Jean burst into fresh tears, which warmed his face a shocking amount. He clutched a rock with shaking fingers and brought it down on the others, fiercely and repetitively crying out in the only way he could allow himself.

“Luc!?” the voice grew closer. The light grew brighter. Jean’s banging grew fiercer.

Finally, _“Luc!!”_ and the Trojan Prince came sliding to his rescue, resplendent in furs and carrying a torch in his gloved hands. A pair of swans flew down with him, honking furiously with unintelligible worry.

“Gods, you’re freezing,” Prince Jeremy said, a bare hand brushing Jean’s cheek before cupping his neck. One of his furs unclasped to tuck around a grateful Jean. “We were so worried! Where are you hurt?”

Jean’s hands were still shaking, even worse now that he was weeping again, but he managed to wave downwards to his now-severely swollen ankle. The swans – who he could see now were Kevin and Neil – crouched around it, bending their heads at different angles as though that would help them see how to fix it.

“Careful!” the Prince scolded, waving them back as though he didn’t yet understand that they weren’t ordinary swans and wouldn’t recklessly peck at Jean’s injury. Kevin hissed at him, unusually aggressive considering he was often cowed by pesky details like _royalty_ and _lord protector of the realm_.

“Sire?” called a voice from atop the ravine. Andrew and Aaron had come with him.

“He’s here!” Prince Jeremy called. “Help me bring him up!”

Jean briefly thought to make a fuss about his broken basket but gratefully gave it up when he saw Neil had already bit the handle and was awkwardly trying to waddle it up the hill.

“ _Now_ will you consider the royal apartments?” the Prince teased, gathering the nothing-to-no-one farm boy into his arms. Jean took advantage of the warm neck available for face-tucking and felt himself relax despite his shivering.

The last thing he saw before falling asleep was Andrew staring strangely after Neil’s determined waddling, hand twitching out like he intended to carry the basket for him or perhaps steady the swan as it hiked the steep incline. Before he could see any decision play out, Jean passed out.

 

* * *

 

 

The thing about Princes was that when they had rescued you once, they felt compelled to keep doing it.

“Please reconsider,” Jeremy pleaded, unquestionably serious unlike he had ever been before, “I swear you’ll be provided for, everything you could want! And my servants could gather many more nettles than you ever could alone. Space can be made for the swans even, if you think they’ll follow you. Or if they stay, I could arrange an escort for you to visit them regu – _why_ are you looking at me like that?”

Jean hadn’t realized he was grinning madly until that moment. The Prince truly was clueless when it came to the magical arts. Did he think The Enchanted Forest was a place that enchanted people could just _leave?_

“You think I’m being forward,” he said, not entirely wrong or right, “but that’s only because the regular decorum has failed me. You are infuriatingly stubborn.”

Jean’s brows rose in surprise. He hadn’t ever once been accused of being stubborn in his life. Before the curse, his brothers and sisters had stepped all over him. In fact, they still butt in and bullied him whenever he was working too hard or too little to save them.

But of course, the curse had changed a lot of things. Stubborn bullheadedness was the only thing that Jean could use to cling to the condition of utter silence. No prince, no matter how charming, was going to keep Jean from freeing his brothers and sisters.

Still, it was nice that someone cared. Someone who could voice their concerns and their frustrations at will. That deserved thanks if nothing else.

Beckoning Jeremy to his bedside, Jean grabbed an open palm and began tracing out script. The hut had never provided ink or parchment. This crude tracework would have to substitute.

The Prince seemed first confused, then awed.

_‘Think about it,’_ Jean wrote out, repeating the message when Prince Jeremy asked him to.

“You know your letters.” His breath was light and he smiled as though Jean had granted him a priceless treasure. “You could talk, if only you had the materials.”

Jean failed to see what was so remarkable about that. But if it distracted Jeremy from his crusade to move Jean out of the forest and into a palace where he desperately didn’t belong, so be it.

“I’ll ensure the servants pack tomorrow’s bags with writing supplies,” he said, smile so wide and bright that Jean couldn’t help but mirror it. “Then I’ll finally know what you’re thinking and why you won’t leave this place with me.”

 

* * *

 

 

“His offer is very generous,” Laila said, averting her eyes from her fingers, which were relieving Jean’s from spinning aster petals into fibre. It was a rare occasion that they were alone, just the two of them in the hut while the others were out tending to the garden or reinforcing the roof or… actually, now that Jean considered it, everything seemed purposeful. Laila was likely a chosen spokesperson, as she was the most peaceful and well-spoken of them all.

“The prince’s,” she clarified, eyes still flitting about, hands steady and gentle in their work. “Very kind of him. And he’s also very handsome, if you cared to notice.”

He had. For once, Jean was glad he could not speak.

“It’s clear to all of us that he cares for you and that you could… grow to care for him,” she said, diplomacy much wiser than her sixteen winters.

_Summers,_ Jean thought. _They count by summers in Troja._

“I’m glad of it. We all are. Once upon a time, I would have been devastated if you left us. But now, after nearly six years, I hope you do.”

Alarmed, Jean stopped the wheel from spinning. His little sister’s hands were trembling.

“It’s not so bad, the life of a swan,” she said, petals dropping as she fought through hitches in her breath. “Eating keeps me busy and I’ll never tire of flying. Did Neil tell you he flew in loops and knots the other day? He’s been making tricks and showing off, competing with Kevin and Sara in races for months. Thea keeps finding new nooks of the Forest to explore and sometimes Katelyn seems to barely remember life before the curse anyway.”

Tears began falling from her eyes, even as her words kept coming. He took her hands in his.

“Six years, Jean. Another season and it will have been six years with us like _this_ when you could be in a palace, courted and happy and maybe even in love.” She sniffed and broke his heart. “I can’t imagine giving that up, Jean, and you shouldn’t have to. Love is this world’s most precious treasure and you turn it away every day.”

Jean pet her hair, wiped away her tears, and anything else he could do to console her, knowing she was wrong. What Jean and Jeremy had was not yet love, even though it could grow to be. But even without that, it wasn’t obligation that kept Jean where he was. It was love – True Love – that made him dedicate years of work to the family he would not abandon for a dozen castles or a hundred treasures.

When the hour passed and she transformed back, Jean took up the aster fibres without pause and she fell against him, mourning the loss of a treasure he didn’t lack.

 

* * *

 

Jean didn’t quite know what he might say that would make Jeremy so excited to talk with him, but the prince was particularly vibrant the next day he visited, face stretched in the brightest smile, and armed with the thickest sheaf of paper Jean had ever seen. If Jean had been allowed to laugh, he would have.

Jeremy grinned as if he saw the laughter in Jean’s face, but he didn’t comment and the papers set on the table with a ‘thud’.

“Now,” Jeremy said, eyes and breath both light with enthusiasm, “tell me what your real name is.”

_'Jean'_  was carefully written, extra care around the curves of Jean’s normally messy letters.

“Jean,” Jeremy murmured, as if tasting how it sounded. He mispronounced it though, made the letters hard and sharp like his own Trojan name and Jean scrunched his nose at the misstep.

_'Softer,'_   he wrote, _‘you’re saying it wrong.'_

“Softer? …Like the word ‘sheen’?”

Another scrunch, even more offended than the last. _‘Dawn.'_

“Dawn… Jean. How appropriate.”

It was completely unfair how a smile rolled off Jeremy’s face as easily as Jean’s name rolled off his tongue.

Jean blushed despite his best efforts, fiddling with his hair and thinking how impossible it was that a human embodiment of daylight could be impressed by something as little as a name.

_‘Why come every day?’_

At least now they were matched for blushing. “I should have thought that was obvious. I’ve not been subtle.”

When Jean’s gaze didn’t clear of confusion, Jeremy elaborated, “I can’t very well court you with anything less than my best effort.”

Jean’s thoughts froze, not because he hadn’t suspected it but because he hadn’t thought to hear it admitted so brazenly. Jean hadn’t spoken a dozen words to the prince, and he was pursuing a courtship?

“I’ve frightened you.” Jeremy sighed and sank back a little in his chair. “I know you aren’t from Troja and so your customs must differ, but I hope you know I’m not implying anything. I’m not going to ask for your hand tomorrow, but I think it’s only fair that you know I plan to eventually, if you wish the same.”

Jean spent a long moment thinking that over. It was the first time he ever envisioned a thing he might want besides his family’s freedom.

_'Why?’_ Jean asked. _‘I’m mute.’_

Jeremy laughed a little. “Yes, you are. And you’re beautiful and gentle and stubborn and steadfast.”

Is that what he thought? The prince had decided all that, helping a dirty peasant boy in the wildest of magical forests?

“The day I met you, I thought I could help you temporarily. The day I found you, I told myself there would come a time when I would no longer feel compelled to offer myself to your work, no matter how witchlike it is. But that’s changed. Not because you’re a ‘damsel in distress’,” he chuckled at his own joke, matching Jean’s grin, “or a mute recluse with only mad swans for company. Even if all of that changed tomorrow, I can’t imagine not wanting to help you. I suppose I… I just want to see you. Always.”

It left Jean breathless, though he hadn’t said a word and Jeremy had just said a great many.

_‘Court away,’_ Jean wrote, feeling bold about the invitation, _‘but I can’t leave the forest until my family returns.’_

Sorrow overcame the prince’s face. “They left you?”

Jean shook his head. _‘Not their fault.’_ Then, because it was too much to explain, he tried to distract: _‘Don’t you worry I’m a witch who’s enchanted you?’_

Jeremy chuckled. “What’s there to worry about? I’d have to be blind and deaf not to be enchanted by you, witch or not.”

Jean supposed he was going to have to get used to this blushing heavily thing.

Another season later, he still wasn’t used to it.


	3. True Love

On the dawn of the sixth year inside the Enchanted Forest, Jean judged that he had woven enough cloth and spun enough thread to create six shirts. The day after he began sewing nettled cloth together with aster thread should have been the day his family transformed. But they didn’t. Or at least, not into their human selves…

Six swans spent that seventh hour hissing at each other, suddenly turned territorial and aggressive in the confined space of the hut. They battered at windows and doors, beat at his loom and wheel like wild and feral swans instead of the rational prisoners they were, and nothing Jean did could calm or stop them.

When the eighth hour came and the fervor ceased, they surrounded him in alarm, honking over his bruises and distressed disarray of the cloth and thread many of them had attacked.

When Jeremy, Andrew, and Aaron arrived, the alarm spread, and they began asking Jean all sorts of questions about who had found him and what they had burgled. Jean couldn’t explain, wouldn’t even reach for the paper when it meant taking his hands away from his still-frantic siblings. Andrew’s eyes were boring into Neil’s, and Aaron gently smoothed down Katelyn’s askew feathers, both men tracking whatever story they could sense.

Jeremy insisted they spend the night and Jean didn’t want to make him worry by refusing.

The swans slept huddled around him that night.

The seventh hour of the next morning, they all fell feral again. Jean was beaten awake with vicious teeth and nasty talons; only the dryness of his throat prevented noises of pain. The ruckus woke the other humans, who sprung to Jean’s aide the second they realized what was happening.

While Andrew and Aaron shooed, herded, and wrestled the animals outside, Jeremy pawed Jean in panic, looking for injuries and fearing the worst. That’s when Jean realized he was spattered with blood – too much for it all to be his own.

But Jeremy had no way of knowing that. “Have they always hurt you?! I never questioned them, they always seemed – but  _ this _ ?!”

He sounded almost as distressed as Jean felt but all Jean could do was shake his head and not explain, tears racing down his face.

The curse had altered itself again. He had moved one step closer to freeing them but the magic fought back with every evil intention it possessed.

For Jean’s safety – and their own – the swans remained outside thereafter, flying off into destructive frenzies every morning but always returning, contrite, upset, and lightly wounded.

 

* * *

Jeremy didn’t demand an explanation, but Jean sat him and the others down anyway because he feared he could no longer break this curse on his own. The curse hadn’t been weakened by time. If it continued to up the ante or became any more aggressive, Jean would need all the hands he could get.

_ ‘I need your help.’ _

“More than usual, you mean?”

“Let him speak, Aaron,” Jeremy chided.

_ ‘The swans need to be kept safe from each other. If one ever hurt another they’d never forgive themselves.’ _

He expected scoffs of disbelief - how mad he must sound, to assign guilt and conscience to wild creatures. But the three men’s eyes kept a steady focus, as though there was nothing to question about the swans.

“Why are they attacking each other?” Aaron asked, now serious, as if making up for his earlier derision. “They’ve never seemed aggressive before.”

“Not between themselves,” Andrew huffed. Jean recalled how Neil had tried to swoop him when they first arrived in the forest, and every day since then until it was almost a game between them.

_ ‘Cursed. Only I can break it.’ _

“That explains why those plants are so important.” 

Again, Jean expected questions. None came, save one: “Will breaking this curse free you as well?”

Jean nodded. Jeremy returned it, and the oath between them tightened the magic in the room. “So what can we do?”

 

* * *

 

Jean doubled his efforts towards shirt-making, working long into the night and forgoing at least one meal a day, to Jeremy’s chagrin. 

After the first shirt was complete, only five swans returned after their morning frenzy. Thea didn’t return to the hut or to her rational self. She remained wild, and viciously opposed the approach of any of them, human or swan. It took a day of written pleading before Andrew and Aaron agreed to trap her on Jean’s behalf and another day before they accomplished the task. She was unhappy in the cage, and often hurt herself against the bars.

The other swans tried to help, calling out reassurances and rolling good food into her cell, but nothing reached her. Eventually, she exhausted herself and fell asleep.

She was no less feral when she woke the next day.

 

* * *

The same happened with Kevin when Jean finished the second shirt. Then Sara when he finished the third.

After that, the other swans stepped willingly into cages of their own, each one separately comforted and fed by a Trojan guest.

Jean felt the urgency when he realized Thea had been refusing food for almost two weeks, worried beyond words that even if he freed her, the starvation might hurt her permanently.

Jeremy wasn’t quick enough to avoid Laila’s bite when she changed.

Andrew gripped Neil’s neck like he had the first time they met and for the first time seemed to be struggling to hold on.

Aaron stepped away from Katelyn, gaze steady as she hissed and spat like a coiled snake.

But it finally meant Jean was ready.

Six shirts, woven from nettle cloth and sewn with aster thread in utter silence, definitive proof of True Love.

Now if only they would wear them.

 

* * *

 

Weakened by hunger and exhausted from her relentless fight with the cage, Thea was easy to force change. When her final shapeshifting began,  the Trojan men had jumped back in alarm but quickly recovered to help Jean when he raced forward to clothe and feed the near-dead woman who finally lay in place of the swan. Kevin and Sara were similarly easy and similarly weakened. Kevin tried to struggle to his feet to help with the others, but eventually gave way when Sara said Thea needed more care.

Laila and Katelyn, though awake and stronger than the first three, were easy enough to distract between the efforts of the four men and entrap with shirts. Katelyn stumbled on her human legs when she transformed, unsteady and pale with nausea. Aaron helped steady her and reluctant to retreat, even when Laila came to relieve him. His eyes remained steady on the little Katelyn and maybe that was why Neil got the advantage he had.

As soon as they opened the cage door, Neil had fought dirty and viciously, flailing and curling, spinning and diving in all the tricks he had taught himself. Given his speed and erratic acrobatics, Jean could only have one chance to free his little brother. He leapt -

His timing was off. Or Neil’s instincts were too sharp. As Jean tugged the last shirt over Neil’s head, Neil twisted and yanked almost out of reach, badly tearing the left sleeve.

Before Jean could cry out, the curse came undone anyway. Neil changed back and fell into Andrew’s open arms, his left arm still a wing of resplendent white feathers.

Jean’s first words in over six years were a hoarse and broken, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My brother, dear brother, I’m so sorry.” 

He didn’t even recognize his own voice. It had changed over the years, even without him using it. It felt like another thing he had lost, triggering an upsettingly mournful feeling in a moment where he should have only felt restored.

 

* * *

 

Life in the Trojan palace couldn’t have been more different from the Ravin fortress where Jean and the others had grown up.

Colour infiltrated the very windows - of which there were many, flooding every corridor with light - shards and pieces placed and designed to create visual stories. Communal bonfires and dining halls sat everyone for meal times, where there was always artful entertainment of music or fool routines. 

The Swan family, as they were introduced, were originally offered individual sleeping chambers which they refused for a single room they could pile in together. For three seasons they latched close to each other, still afraid another tragedy would separate them. But as time passed, their tensions relaxed, and eventually they each began to find their own ways to fit into the castle and branched out naturally.

Thea, the bravest, and Kevin, the strongest, were each granted a knighthood and followed their hearts back to Ravin, where they evacuated other victims of Ravinese cursework. A fierce team, they smuggled people and dangerous artifacts across borders where they could be made safe, either to the Enchanted Forest where they could be lost, or to Troja where they could be cured by Jean who had continued to study curse-breaking and grow his talents.

Sara, the wisest, and Laila, the pacifist, found home in the libraries of Troja, befriending scholars and tutors who once taught Prince Jeremy the ways of science, language, and philosophy. Eventually, they became tutors themselves and frequented the marketplace to answer questions from the commonfolk or pass on teachings to poorer children.

Neil, the fastest (the least human), frequently joined Andrew and Aaron on their hunts, which helped a great deal in relearning his balance and physical capabilities. Soon he was twirling and gliding and racing across terrain not even the horses could follow. He still charged Andrew once a day, in practice of his stealth or close combat skills, he often excused.

Katelyn, the gentlest, followed in the footsteps of the nurse who had cared for them all in Ravin, and established an orphanage within the palace walls. She became mother to seven children, all of whom best loved demanding stories from whoever came to visit them (often Aaron, fist of wildflowers in hand).

“How did you truly know I wasn’t an ill-meaning witch?” Jean asked one day, overlooking the castle from the parapets, his attentive prince beside him. “You Sense with your ears, but I could not speak. You took a gamble.”

Jeremy chuckled. “No, it was no gamble at all. You were so quiet in that field, I heard your heartbeat, and it rang more true and pure than any voice I know.” Awed, Jean could do nothing when Jeremy bestowed him a kiss of admiration. “Your heart has always lead you true, Jean. I am eternally grateful it lead me to you.”

And so Jean, the truest of lovers, was beloved in turn by king, kingdom, and family for the rest of his days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this far! Please send some love to viridianjane if you enjoyed what you saw!


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